SHORT STORIES

World Inside My Head is a story I wrote several years ago as a testament to the beauty of our imaginations.

World Inside My Head

By Hamish Spiers

“Where are you now?”

I looked at the man sitting in front of me in the little room we shared. Mike Enrique Rodriguez. The first man to fly a mission to Mars, he never set foot on its surface but he did the first manned orbital survey of the red planet and spent an unprecedented eight months in space to do so. And he did it solo.

It was a remarkable achievement and one that involved considerable risk. At one point, the shielding unit failed, exposing Rodriguez to intense levels of solar radiation that would have killed him if he hadn’t got it fixed in time – and that was just one of the many near disasters. However, despite the myriad of technical challenges he had to overcome and the physical endurance he demonstrated both in surviving his mission and recuperating from it afterwards, it was his mental endurance that impressed so many of his colleagues. And that’s what impressed me. I can only imagine the loneliness and sheer boredom he must have faced, confined in a tiny capsule further from home than any explorer in human history. Yet, he not only survived with his sanity in one piece, he developed an incredible gift. The freedom to be anywhere he wanted at any time, despite whatever circumstances he found himself in. To have imaginary experiences so vivid, they are as real to him as the tactile experiences of life are for the rest of us. To have the whole world inside his head, in all its infinite wonder.

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